And now from the window
of a four-wheeled cab
the Queen of Babylon
beheld the wondrous wonders of London.
Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting;
Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better.
But she liked the Tower,
and the River and the ships filled her with delight.
“But how badly you keep your slaves.
How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,”
said the Queen, as the cab rattled
along the Mile End Road.
And Jane replied:
“They aren't slaves;
they're working-people.”
“Of course they're working.
That's what slaves are.
Do you suppose I don't know
a slave's face when I see it?
Why don't their masters see
that they're better fed and better clothed?
Tell me in three words.”
No one answered.
The wage-system of modern England
is a little difficult to explain in three words
even if you understand it,
which the children did not.
“You'll have a revolt of your slaves
if you're not careful,”
said the Queen, as the cab continued
along the Mile End Road.
“Oh, no,” said Cyril;
“you see they have votes—
that makes them safe not to revolt.
It makes all the difference.
Father told me so.”
“What is this vote?” asked the Queen.
“Is it a charm? Is it a spell?
Can it make things, buy things, fix things?
Does it heal them or help them?
Tell me, what do they do with it?”
“I don't know,” said the harassed Cyril;
“it's just a vote, that's all!
They don't do anything particular with it.”
“I see,” said the Queen, “a sort of plaything.
Well, I wish that all these slaves
may have in their hands this moment
their fill of their favorite food and drink.”
Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road,
and in all the other streets where poor people live,
found their hands full of things to eat and drink.
Roast meat, fowls, red lobsters, great yellowy crabs,
fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak puddings,
baked onions, mutton pies;
most of the young ones
had oranges and sweets and cake.
It made an enormous change
in the look of the Mile End Road—
brightened it up, so to speak,
and brightened up,
more than you can possibly imagine,
the faces of the people.
“Makes a difference, doesn't it?” asked the Queen.
And Jane replied with cordial approval,
“That's the best wish you've had yet.”

Programming Aids

Performance Difficulty:

moderate

Descriptive Terms:

social justice

poverty

voting

fantasy

children

Allow Excerpts:

Composition is a single movement

Composer’s Notes:

The work is based Edith Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet. Written in 1906, the novel concludes a trilogy chronicling the fantastical adventures of four siblings while their parents are abroad.The children find one half of a two-part amulet that promises to give them their greatest desire—the safe return of their parents—and they undertake a quest to find the second half. The amulet has the power to transport people through time, so the children travel to times and places where the second half of the amulet might be found.

In the company of a wish-granting creature called the Psammead, the siblings visit a utopian future as well as past civilizations including Egypt, Atlantis, and Babylon. While in Babylon, one of the children reveals to its Queen that the Psammead grants wishes. She wishes to see the children’s country and is transported to London circa 1900, where the children show her the city.

This composition dramatizes a small scene from that tour, where the Queen sees the poor people of the city and mistakes them for slaves. The children naively respond that they are not slaves because they have “votes.” The interaction, while brief and of no particular consequence in the plot of the story, struck me as particularly relevant to contemporary circumstances.

I selected the text shortly after the American presidential election, seeing in Nesbit’s words an expression of both the disparity between the highest and lowest echelons of our economy and also the feeling of political powerlessness many people felt as a result of the election. To me, what seems like a fanciful, even humorous scene in fact brings up a number of serious issues. It calls to attention the question of how or even whether a society that condones economic oppression is any better than one that practices slavery. It also asks us to consider what it means to have a voice in government if it does not seem to make a difference in one’s quality of life. These profound undercurrents are what stayed with me after reading Nesbit’s story, and I hope that her words will make a similarly lasting impression on audiences hearing this piece.